Yahoo Acquires Storytelling App Qwiki

Yahoo has acquired the video-production app Qwiki, the company said today.

Qwiki, which bills itself as a storytelling app, lets users set a musical backdrop and video transitions for photos and video and share the results. Like Tumblr, the company is based in New York. Also like Tumblr, the app will remain operational as a standalone entity within Yahoo.

According to Yahoo, the Qwiki staff, led by Doug Imbruce and AltaVista founder Louis Monier, will also help “reimagine Yahoo!’s storytelling experience.”

“This is so much more than a happy ending. It’s a beautiful new beginning,” Qwiki said on its blog.

Qwiki won TechCrunch’s Disrupt competition in 2010, when one of the judges on the panel was Marissa Mayer, then a Google executive. Yahoo paid roughly $50 million to acquire the company, according to AllThingsD.